


Hello

by hannahhoppers



Series: The CS Playlist [2]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Ficlet, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-14
Updated: 2016-10-14
Packaged: 2018-08-22 07:42:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8278115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hannahhoppers/pseuds/hannahhoppers
Summary: Hello, I am the lie living for you so you can hide.
Based on the Evanescence song of the same name.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own the show or the characters, so I'm playing with them. Adam and Eddy have such nice toys. Unbeta'd. Kudos and comments if you enjoy!

_Playground school bell rings again_

_Rain clouds come to play again_

 

Little Eva swung back and forth, blonde pigtails swishing, under his watchful eye. It was a Saturday ritual, rain or shine, for the pair to play at the park. Thunder boomed around them, but the girl only giggled and swung higher. He worried, of course, but his daughter was adamant they go play. 

 

“Eva, off the swings for a moment, please. I’ll be right back, aye?”

 

“Okay.” She slid off the seat and toddled over towards the merry-go-round. He pulled his ringing phone out of his pocket. David’s name flashed across the screen.

 

“Hello?”

 

“Hook, we need you at the hospital. Emma… she’s had an accident.” 

 

“What? Gods… We’ll be right down.” He disconnected the line and scooped up the child. “Eva, Mummy needs us.” He took off back into town, making it to the brick building in record time. The man at the front desk barely glanced up before pointing to the elevator. He took it to the upper floor and found his in-laws in the waiting room, clutching each other tight. When they looked up, anguish in his eyes, he went numb. 

 

_Has no one told you she's not breathing?_

 

“She slipped off the pier,” David choked over his wife’s shoulder. “By the time we got her out of the water, she was almost gone.” Stumbling to a seat, he sank into it and clutched Eva close. 

 

“We’re so sorry, Killian,” Mary Margaret said. He didn’t respond, just buried his face in his daughter’s curls, shushing her quiet sobs. It was only when her little voice quivered, asking “Where’s Mommy?” that he began to cry. 

 

The family huddled together on hard seats for hours, mourning the loss of the woman who’d saved them all. The sun sank below the horizon and the toddler fell asleep in his lap before he pulled away from them and headed home. He laid their little girl down in her bed and walked downstairs to the couch, unable to stomach the thought of sleeping in the room they’d shared without her. 

 

_Hello, I am your mind giving you someone to talk to_

 

In the middle of the night, he shuddered awake, unaware he’d ever fallen asleep, feeling a cold hand lain on his arm. His eyes opened to a vision of her, hair soaked and skin damp. She held his hand, rubbed his back as he sobbed recklessly at the loss. Until the early hours of the morning, they talked. When he woke again to Eva’s cries, she was gone, and he felt more alone than before. 

 

_If I smile and don't believe_

_Soon I know I'll wake from this dream_

 

As months passed and the town stopped wearing black for their sheriff, his heart never ceased to mourn. For Eva’s sake, and Henry’s, he gave false smiles, pretended he was alright, secretly carrying around the hope that this was the longest nightmare of all time. 

 

_Don't try to fix me, I'm not broken_

 

He ignored everyone’s attempts to help him. 

 

“I’m fine.”

 

“Everything’s okay.”

 

“Thank you, Dr. Hopper, but I’m alright.” 

 

_Hello, I am the lie living for you so you can hide_

_Don't cry_

 

It began to feel as if he were a different person around everybody else, a robotic shell who lived and breathed and cared for his daughter, but held no feeling. He only cried at night, in the safety of the darkness while visions of his lost love floated around the house he’d chosen for them and whispered that everything was okay.

 

_Suddenly I know I'm not sleeping_

_Hello, I'm still here_

_All that's left of yesterday_

 

It was only when little Eva, who wasn’t so little anymore, fell off the same pier her mother did that he realized this was no dream. He saved her, of course he did, how could he lose somebody else to these waters? But it was a close thing. As he pumped his hands against his daughter’s chest, trying to coax her heart into beating again, he realized how very like Emma she looked. It dawned on him how little of a father he’d been since he’d lost her— too lost in his own grief to provide for his own child. So while he carried home his Eva, dripping wet and more adult than child, he vowed to be the parent she’d needed and hadn’t had. After all, she was all he had left of her mother. 


End file.
